Take 5: Tips for deep-frying your holiday turkey

There is nothing better than a deep fried turkey for Thanksgiving, but Chris Heck, Beacon’s emergency preparedness manager, cautions how this fried delight can come with a price.

To make sure you don’t get burned or accidentally set anything on fire on Thursday, or anytime you might be eating turkey this holiday season, Chris offered these five safety tips:

1. Have a fire extinguisher close by rated for oil/grease fires.
2. DO NOT fry your turkey on a flammable surface such as a wooden deck. Place it in your yard or driveway so that if a fire starts it will not burn down your house. Make sure that the area is flat and stable.
3. Do not overfill your fryer with oil. One trick is to put your turkey in the empty pot while the burner is off and fill it full of water. Take the turkey out and make note of where the water level is and that is where you fill up the pot with oil.
4. Before you lower the turkey into the oil, turn off the burner.
5. Make sure your turkey is completely thawed. The ice in the turkey thaws out very quickly into steam and then causes the scalding hot oil to erupt and shoot out of the oil pot all over the place. (I found this out the hard way.) If you didn’t follow safety tip #2, you now have a raging fire.